Statistical Mechanic wrote:I'm expecting a yellow card for writing that Saggy belongs in the conspiraloon category. But ISF is maddening: Saggy can fill page after page accusing all others of being Jewish liars, hasbara operatives, etc - he can lay out supposed gradations of hasbara and assign members to them - and even mild replies to this crap get smacked down (edited, yellow carded - ok, LeoMajor's comments are not mild, but everyone else is reasoned, moderate in tone, and without personal venom).

Honest question: what's up with the moderators there?

Always found that forum strangely run... and Clayton Moore was enough of a dose to drive me out.

Statistical Mechanic wrote: ok, LeoMajor's comments are not mild, but everyone else is reasoned, moderate in tone, and without personal venom).

He uses specific information, and IIRC, made reference to testimony that I believe is available in Arad and Sereny's respective books should Saggy feel the need to read them. His occasional invective, IMO, is a product of exasperation at Saggys unwillingness to respond with anything other than casual whining.

Statistical Mechanic wrote: ok, LeoMajor's comments are not mild, but everyone else is reasoned, moderate in tone, and without personal venom).

He uses specific information, and IIRC, made reference to testimony that I believe is available in Arad and Sereny's respective books should Saggy feel the need to read them. His occasional invective, IMO, is a product of exasperation at Saggys unwillingness to respond with anything other than casual whining.

Oh guys, the barrier of the language made me standing speechless for some minutes until I realized this Illinois nazi Yeager claims seriously-seriously that these women are the same person?
It was so hard for me to understand it, I still can't believe it.

We need to take back our country … nothing less. Donald Trump can help us, but the onus is on us and it's time we recognized it. We could start with putting up a much better campaign against the Charlottesville slander. I am very surprised that it's been so weak, practically non-existent. Where are the lawsuits against the police and the mayor's office? Where are the powerful essays denouncing the establishment's lies? Where is Richard Spencer? He took off for France and hasn't been seen or heard from since (as far as I know).
Kudos to Occidental Dissent for hunting down the videos revealing Heather Heyer images at the protest and the fact she died of a heart attack, and to the videomakers who examined the uncanny resemblance between Susan Bro and Donna Soto. But where is the follow-up?

Honest to God, our “leaders” are depending on Tucker Carlson of Fox News to do the work for them! But Fox will only go so far (not very). Our “academics” are afraid to go anywhere, as usual, that they fear they might be ridiculed for later.
There's a gold mine of opportunity here. Our people with the technical computer skills should be on it. Are they? Many would rather sit back and trash Trump, it seems, than do any real work themselves.

According to experts and scholars, the 10 stages of every genocide are

The population had shrunk, from both the huge losses on the battlefields of the 'Great War' and because of the plummeting birth rate due to economic collapse and the resulting takeover of much of the German professional sphere by Jews. Private property of bankrupt Germans was “bought for pennies on the dollar” by avaricious Jewish 'businessmen'.

Ah, Carolyn is the gift that keeps giving. She won't let me comment on anything she administers herself.

The reality is that birth rates in general in Europe started declining around the beginning of the 20th Century, Richard Evans in his book "Pursuit of Power" talks about this. People stopped having as many children due to societal changes, large families were no longer necessary. There are other sources I've read on it but that's the most recent one I've read.

“They say..that in Slonim they gathered in the town square 14,000 people...and all were machine-gunned. I ask you, is it possible to believe such a thing?...How can the world remain silent? It is probably not true.”
Calel Perechodnik, Polish Jew, 1942

I don't see how anyone can debate that the two "different" women have eyes, teeth, lips, and lower teeth. That's all I need to know. Plus that there is a limited pool of crisis actors. With this information, the rest is obvious.

Statistical Mechanic wrote:Saggy may have become too tedious for me, at about 3:30 this afternoon, Central time. I am trying to hang in but I dunno.

Yeah, I might have another go at him but not today. He's no longer answering me, anyway.

“They say..that in Slonim they gathered in the town square 14,000 people...and all were machine-gunned. I ask you, is it possible to believe such a thing?...How can the world remain silent? It is probably not true.”
Calel Perechodnik, Polish Jew, 1942

To get a break from Saggy, I read a 4chan thread today kicked off citing evidence for the Holocaust including "letters of approval with Hitlers signature for ordering the extermination of jewish people as final solution for the jewish question."

Some typical replies:
"50 million people were killed to establish AmeriJewish hegemony over the entire world and you want us to weep over a few Jews that their fellow Chosen Ones pushed under the bus."
"Thats what they get for destabilizing the world."
"Even though the Holocaust never happened, I can't wait for the next one."
"jews declared war on germans, not the other way around"

>"Kudos to Occidental Dissent for hunting down the videos revealing Heather Heyer images at the protest and the fact she died of a heart attack, and to the videomakers who examined the uncanny resemblance between Susan Bro and Donna Soto."

So what? So too did the late Princess of Wales whose heart arrested 3 times between auto accident site and hospital.

I'm done with Saggy, I'll keep popping in to keep track but I don't see any point in replying to him.

“They say..that in Slonim they gathered in the town square 14,000 people...and all were machine-gunned. I ask you, is it possible to believe such a thing?...How can the world remain silent? It is probably not true.”
Calel Perechodnik, Polish Jew, 1942

Statistical Mechanic wrote:He is hapless and hopeless. Moving on to the Bad Arolsen falsehood was a glorious touch.

Thing is, this has more or less run its course, no? I mean, Codoh is a bizarre Stalinist cell meeting, and Rodoh is basically a mental institution. What's left?

YouTube and Twitter. Blogs. Sometimes Facebook. I found a Facebook denier on a group D-H and I follow. I actually wound up feeling somewhat sorry for him, his Holocaust denial is based on his anger towards Israel, he's a Palestinian. He posted a link to David Cole (of all people) and vanished.

I'm starting to think we need to change the name of this subforum to "Holocaust History," something like that. It's really what it's turned into, we share our knowledge with each other while adding in bits and pieces of denial where we find them.

“They say..that in Slonim they gathered in the town square 14,000 people...and all were machine-gunned. I ask you, is it possible to believe such a thing?...How can the world remain silent? It is probably not true.”
Calel Perechodnik, Polish Jew, 1942

Statistical Mechanic wrote:He is hapless and hopeless. Moving on to the Bad Arolsen falsehood was a glorious touch.

Thing is, this has more or less run its course, no? I mean, Codoh is a bizarre Stalinist cell meeting, and Rodoh is basically a mental institution. What's left?

YouTube and Twitter. Blogs. Sometimes Facebook. I found a Facebook denier on a group D-H and I follow. I actually wound up feeling somewhat sorry for him, his Holocaust denial is based on his anger towards Israel, he's a Palestinian. He posted a link to David Cole (of all people) and vanished.

I'm starting to think we need to change the name of this subforum to "Holocaust History," something like that. It's really what it's turned into, we share our knowledge with each other while adding in bits and pieces of denial where we find them.

I thought we were posting about Trump whilst waiting for a new denier to show up or for David to return from wherever he went.

From what I've seen of that YT and Twitter stuff, 90% of it comes across as 15-year-olds who've recently decided to be {!#%@}. Not as much fun as 30- and 40-somethings who are full grown {!#%@}, like those who used to debate on the discussion boards.

Statistical Mechanic wrote:He is hapless and hopeless. Moving on to the Bad Arolsen falsehood was a glorious touch.

Thing is, this has more or less run its course, no? I mean, Codoh is a bizarre Stalinist cell meeting, and Rodoh is basically a mental institution. What's left?

YouTube and Twitter. Blogs. Sometimes Facebook. I found a Facebook denier on a group D-H and I follow. I actually wound up feeling somewhat sorry for him, his Holocaust denial is based on his anger towards Israel, he's a Palestinian. He posted a link to David Cole (of all people) and vanished.

I'm starting to think we need to change the name of this subforum to "Holocaust History," something like that. It's really what it's turned into, we share our knowledge with each other while adding in bits and pieces of denial where we find them.

I thought we were posting about Trump whilst waiting for a new denier to show up or for David to return from wherever he went.

From what I've seen of that YT and Twitter stuff, 90% of it comes across as 15-year-olds who've recently decided to be {!#%@}. Not as much fun as 30- and 40-somethings who are full grown {!#%@}, like those who used to debate on the discussion boards.

I do my bit to get them here. Can't get anyone to bite, they are probably scared the Hasbros will get them.

I suspect David is gone for good, he popped up briefly last May but never said anything. Shame, really, makes me wish I joined a couple of years ago.

I'm a bit behind on posting some new stuff I've read about, I'll get to it eventually. I'll start on the Lodz Ghetto Chronicle once I'm done with Bullock's book on Hitler and Stalin. I've already compiled a list of stuff I'm looking to get in the next few months.

“They say..that in Slonim they gathered in the town square 14,000 people...and all were machine-gunned. I ask you, is it possible to believe such a thing?...How can the world remain silent? It is probably not true.”
Calel Perechodnik, Polish Jew, 1942

So I just checked the ISF thread and saw that LeoMajor 1) got yellow carded but before the card came out his posts 2) provoked discussion of moderation and an attempt at self-moderation by smartcooky which in turn 3) was interpreted by Darat as complaining about the moderation and drew two more yellow cards, one for smartcooky and one for Nessie who replied to smartcooky ... and a return of the thread to moderated status, which is actually its near-death. Last time that happened, the thread slowed to a crawl.

The moderation there is downright evil. The yellow cards for smartcooky and Nessie confuse a warning to LeoMajor and an attempt to stop the bickering with kvetching in the thread about the moderation, for which there are grounds indeed, kvetching about the mods, that is, unlike here.

So, on top of Jeffk's having had it with Saggy's non-arguments, there's now another reason not to post at ISF.

Jeff_36 wrote:I'm starting to think that the ISF mods and the RODOH mods may be one and the same.

I have to say that, knowing that forum, the yellow card for LeoMajor's posts was utterly predictable - actually I predicated it - the ones for smartcooky and Nessie not so much. Darat may have interpreted those as complaining about the mods or as using a discussion about etiquette to repeat already yellow carded/banished statements. But a lot of what they do in moderation there is bizarre and inconsistent. It boggles the mind, for example, that they allow Saggy to make post after post violating the ad hom rule by castigating others as "hasbros" - but then slap those so castigated for less.

Statistical Mechanic wrote:
I have to say that, knowing that forum, the yellow card for LeoMajor's posts was utterly predictable - actually I predicated it -

Did you see Saggys posts? Should he have been carded by those same standards? I feel for LeoMajor, he really seemed to be trying to goad Saggy into engaging in a factual discussion there.

the ones for smartcooky and Nessie not so much. Darat may have interpreted those as complaining about the mods or as using a discussion about etiquette to repeat already yellow carded/banished statements.

Having read the posts I cannot see any way they could have been perceived as hostile to the mods.

But a lot of what they do in moderation there is bizarre and inconsistent. It boggles the mind, for example, that they allow Saggy to make post after post violating the ad hom rule by castigating others as "hasbros" - but then slap those so castigated for less.

Not just Hasbro stuff - he insinuated that the Mods were conspiring against him, he justified mass murder of Latvian Jews, made all kinds of antisemetic comments, he's the teflon don.

Jeff_36 wrote:Did you see Saggys posts? Should he have been carded by those same standards?

Yes, that's what I wrote. But although they sometimes card Saggy, they do so sparingly and idiosyncratically. Those debating Saggy almost always get slapped for much less. That was in fact my whole point: "It boggles the mind, for example, that they allow Saggy to make post after post violating the ad hom rule by castigating others as 'hasbros' - but then slap those so castigated for less."

Jeff_36 wrote:I feel for LeoMajor, he really seemed to be trying to goad Saggy into engaging in a factual discussion there.

Well that's a fool's errand. But he did get away with calling Saggy an amoeba. The real issue for ISF would be that LeoMajor's post violated Rules 0 and 12, clearly, and he can't justify doing so out of frustration at Saggy's evasions. Not at ISF.

Jeff_36 wrote:

the ones for smartcooky and Nessie not so much. Darat may have interpreted those as complaining about the mods or as using a discussion about etiquette to repeat already yellow carded/banished statements.

Having read the posts I cannot see any way they could have been perceived as hostile to the mods.

And yet . . .

Jeff_36 wrote:Not just Hasbro stuff - he insinuated that the Mods were conspiring against him, he justified mass murder of Latvian Jews, made all kinds of antisemetic comments, he's the teflon don.

The hasbro comments specifically violate Rule 12; I missed anything he said about the mods except once I recall his saying he was on a short leash or something. I don't think that the other posts you mention violate the membership agreement, I'd have to re-check it.

Statistical Mechanic wrote:The hasbro comments specifically violate Rule 12; I missed anything he said about the mods except once I recall his saying he was on a short leash or something. I don't think that the other posts you mention violate the membership agreement, I'd have to re-check it.

When someone mentioned getting suspended, Saggy stated "I think it was for violating the Shabbat", implying that the mods were Jews and therefore conspiring against him.

Statistical Mechanic wrote:The hasbro comments specifically violate Rule 12; I missed anything he said about the mods except once I recall his saying he was on a short leash or something. I don't think that the other posts you mention violate the membership agreement, I'd have to re-check it.

When someone mentioned getting suspended, Saggy stated "I think it was for violating the Shabbat", implying that the mods were Jews and therefore conspiring against him.

That was about his suspension from this forum, SSF. It has nothing to do with ISF or its mods.

Statistical Mechanic wrote:The hasbro comments specifically violate Rule 12; I missed anything he said about the mods except once I recall his saying he was on a short leash or something. I don't think that the other posts you mention violate the membership agreement, I'd have to re-check it.

When someone mentioned getting suspended, Saggy stated "I think it was for violating the Shabbat", implying that the mods were Jews and therefore conspiring against him.

That was about his suspension from this forum, SSF. It has nothing to do with ISF or its mods.

Oh, {!#%@} yes, he is. But I think ISF allows vile racists to post if they follow forum rules. Which he doesn't, the hasbro stuff being the constant offender, and I think we agree that the moderating is crap in that they allow that but punish far less from the people he's targeted.

Another point on the inconsistency of moderation: the HD thread(s) at ISF have been clearly marked as the only permissible venue for HD discussion. Part IV, for example, has this reminder: "As always, all Holocaust-related discussion should be confined to this thread."

So Darat puts the HD thread on moderated status - and Nessie starts a new thread on debating HD. Consistency in moderation and application of the rules would imply shutting down that thread and maybe even pulling a yellow card for Nessie. But, nope, not only does the thread survive but Darat posts in it!

Not only that (above) but also . . . Nick Terry made a marvelous post in the thread (quoted in full below) on how to approach debate with deniers, if you're going to engage in it . . . and Darat nominated the post for the ISF language award. So just when I think I "get" their modus operandi, they surprise me!

"Dealing" with Holocaust deniers primarily means encountering them somewhere, e.g. on a forum, or in comments threads at YouTube or a blog, or on another social media platform. In many cases the deniers will be posting in their own 'safe spaces' and so anyone trying to confront them there will be censored or mobbed.

Most people rightly won't want to waste their time responding, but one-sided spamming of denial can create the impression that nobody is responding to them or has nothing to say. This is the dilemma regarding responding to any fringe assertion.

The most important thing - if you decide to comment - when encountering deniers is not to escalate to insults or throw out labels straight away. It suits them to provoke non-deniers into name-calling, so don't call them names. Usually their motivations will become apparent fairly quickly, but until they post something overtly antisemitic, don't call them antisemites or Jew-haters. Unless they post something that is obviously pro-Nazi (eg blaming the Allies for 'starting WWII' or saying that Hitler was hard done by), don't call them Nazis. Better off calling them pro-Nazi or some other variant unless they're sporting swastika avatars.

Deniers often pretend not to be antisemitic or pro-Nazi, so a premature labelling can lead to endless meta-debate that suits them down to the ground. They also often would like to pretend to be cool and rational, so getting hysterical or throwing out insults plays into their hands.

Should they display antisemitic or pro-Nazi sentiments, then naturally you can comment on these as long as it's done calmly and accurately. That is often enough for coping with random incursions. If they barge in trolling and spewing Jew-hatred, then you can respond more vigorously, but in many YouTube comments threads, there will be a bunch of Daily Stormer type trolls and then a few who are pretending not to be antisemitic, maybe even fence-sitters. The latter category want to present themselves as calm, neutral voices, so they can snipe from the sidelines.

If labelling, use adjectives to describe sentiments and points ('that's an antisemitic cliche') rather than nouns to brand someone as an antisemite forever, at least for the time being. If a troll hangs around long enough, then that can change. But until you know they are completely beyond argument, don't just fling out insults and labels.

It doesn't hurt, if discussion has begun, to *ask* the denier or pretend fence-sitter why they are interested in 'revisionism' or think there is anything to it, or what it is meant to achieve. Ask them: why are they deniers? Many will reveal their true colours, those that don't will offer up some explanation or conversion narrative. If for example they say 'I saw this video' then it's surely legitimate to point out that many ludicrous videos have made the rounds of the internet in the past 10 years (Loose Change, Zeitgeist) and been shown as ridiculous, depending on your own experiences and knowledge. The comparison with conspiracy theories is good when used properly.

If they say they read xyz 'Holocaust Handbook', point out that they're not peer-reviewed and that professional historians disagree. If they respond by saying the most important historians of the Holocaust, or all historians, are Jewish, then they've exposed themselves, and they're also wrong, since proportionately, most come from Germany and there are enough non-Jewish historians from enough different countries who've checked the work to make this a ludicrous proposition.

Veteran deniers of the kind that Nessie puts up with love nothing more than to reverse burden of proof and try to get their interlocutors to provide evidence for a set of moving goalposts. Some deniers will baldly assert 'there is no evidence for x'. In both cases the assertions and requests may be flatly wrong, e.g. there are indeed documents about gassing and extermination, so it can't hurt to point this out.

Others have pointed out that deniers usually can't answer questions, and for sure, if any 'substantive' discussion unfolds, then they should be asked questions - regarding what actually happened, and if they are making overt or implicit conspiracy claims, regarding how the 'hoax' emerged. If the denier is simply blaming the 'hoax' on 'the Jews', then they're sufficiently far gone into antisemitic territory that they can easily be dismissed/shut down.

The most important thing to remember when conducting a more 'substantive' discussion with deniers is not to let them reduce things to one minor aspect or one site. That does require a certain amount of knowledge of the Holocaust, but such knowledge is widespread and there are many resources available to learn from.

Pretty much everyone knows that historical, social-scientific and scientific discussions do not usually revolve around a single piece of evidence or single witness or single aspect. Yet social media including forum threads lends itself to that kind of denialist Thermopylae. Outflank them and add in other points.

For example, the Hoess-was-tortured meme fails rapidly because he was not the only SS man at Auschwitz to testify to mass extermination and gassing there, and SS testimony is not the only type of evidence for mass murder at Auschwitz. By all means debate some aspects of Hoess's statements and memoirs, but don't forget there is more evidence. The indexes of evidence at Holocaust Controversies can be good reminders of the range of examples.

One of the best-documented extermination sites is the camp at Chelmno, and the sources for this are being explained in a series of blog posts here, including presenting facsimiles and translations. This was the first extermination camp, so if the deniers cannot explain away all of the evidence (including archaeological) for the first in the queue, why should they be taken seriously about the others?

Since the Holocaust unfolded over many sites and a prolonged period, it is rather easy for deniers to switch from point to point and play Denier BS Bingo. They can easily refuse to be pinned down because they can cycle back and forth between Auschwitz and other camps, between photos, testimonies, documents and meta-arguments. Which is why veteran deniers tend to believe they have not been 'refuted', because they haven't stayed still long enough to talk a subject through. As soon as they were corrected on one point, they move onto another point in a Gish Gallop. It's worth pointing out the fact that they are Gish Galloping, or to comment on how ridiculous they are when they jump around, especially if you can expose their ignorance on things.

Make comparisons - deniers are usually grotesquely ignorant of the histories of other outbreaks of mass violence, or are selectively ignorant and only invoke a few cliches (eg Katyn). This is important if the discussion gets onto a standards-of-evidence meta-debate, especially around physical evidence. It's easy to show that the typical presentations of e.g. Stalinist mass violence, the Armenian genocide, Rwanda etc don't start with mass graves. There might be mass graves to discuss, but the number of victims is never determined by corpse-counting unless the wave of violence is small enough and recent enough that this can be done. Nearly all discussion of mass violence and genocide revolves around documents and witnesses. The selective interest of deniers and would-be deniers in the Holocaust versus their typical disinterest in other instances of mass violence is a good reminder of their true motivations. Only a very small number of self-styled 'revisionists' will bother to deny other genocides. This exposes their double standards and hypocrisy.

None of this will convince the denier, as many others have said already, but some of this can help prevent lurkers and fence-sitters from thinking there is anything to denier BS.

I was tempted to ask Nick in the thread about what I would call The Poosh Exception to this point "The most important thing - if you decide to comment - when encountering deniers is not to escalate to insults or throw out labels straight away," but that's too much of a Rodoh1.0/Rodoh666 "technical" matter for a general forum (My own take is that Nick is 100% right in general - and that debating loyally and without assumptions denies the deniers howls of outrage about where you're coming from . . . and on occasion leads to surprises, a point which the ISF regulars don't concede, perhaps because of their denier cohort . . . and that poosh was the rare exception who could operate differently on account of his language skills and utter contempt for BS.)

Statistical Mechanic wrote:
I was tempted to ask Nick in the thread about what I would call The Poosh Exception to this point "The most important thing - if you decide to comment - when encountering deniers is not to escalate to insults or throw out labels straight away,"

Creative insults are still creative. Only someone with true mastery of sarcasm and wit should start with insults, preferably subtle ones that fly over the heads of their targets while reducing everyone else to giggle fits. The target must have already brainfarted and can therefore be legitimately ridiculed.

I posted some in this topic, started by a fellow by the name of Lammers. I got Lammers to join here but he won't post. Lammers is a "soft denier," he believes that the Reinhard Camps were death camps of a sort but is skeptical about gas chambers. He believes that the Germans did murder millions of Jewish civilians on the Eastern Front through the actions of the E.G., etc.

I always thought Lammers would benefit from coming here but he's only come once and won't post.

In any case, I know a picture like this would annoy the hell out of been-there.

“They say..that in Slonim they gathered in the town square 14,000 people...and all were machine-gunned. I ask you, is it possible to believe such a thing?...How can the world remain silent? It is probably not true.”
Calel Perechodnik, Polish Jew, 1942